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The period between 1815 and 1914, is known by many as "Pax Britannica" because of Great Britain's global domination of land and sea.
The kingdom controlled approximately 10,000,000 sq/mls and over 400,000,000 people. The phrase "The sun never sets on English soil." was coined during this century of overwhelming imperialism.
British East India Company
The British East India Company was given a monopoly on trade between India and Great Britain.
The company, itself, ruled India as a conquering power from 1757 to 1857.
In 1757, the company, itself, defeated the last of the Mughal maharajahs and ruled over India with its own governors and military. The leaders were all British but the soldiers in the British East India Co. army were Indian - called "Sepoys".
The British East India Co. was a private joint-stock company founded by investors in the year 1600AD.
The company traded in:
salt
The British used opium as currency in its trade deals in China for tea and silks.
This practice had grave consequences for both the British and the people of China.
Inspired by growing feelings of nationalism and resentment over British domination, the Sepoy soldiers rebelled in 1857.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yXKbd5IDzU
Terrified that the British East India Company could no longer secure India, the British government took control of the Indian sub-continent and began its direct rule, which lasted until India won its independence in 1947.
This agreement, the Treaty of Nanjing, was the first of the "unequal treaties," that opened China to the West and marked the beginning of western exploitation of the nation
In effect, this treaty forced the Chinese government to surrender its control in its own country.
England didn’t return Hong Kong to China until 1997!
Between 1898 and 1901, members of the Righteous Harmony Society in China made an effort to rid the country of foreign influence.
The Boxers were fighting against:
The Boxers were eventually defeated by a joint force of international troops from Europe, Japan, and the United States.
The Qing Empire ruled China from 1644 to 1912.
1793
http://www.history.com/shows/mankind-the-story-of-all-of-us/videos/opium-in-china
1851 – 1864
It was because of the natural disasters, economic and political conflicts.
They claimed for:
Overthrow the Q’ing dynasty
Take out the foreigners, equality and rights.
Lin Tse-Hsu had three proposals to “solve” China’s drug problem. He was able to put his first two proposals into effect easily.
Addicts were rounded up and forced into a rehab program
Chinese drug dealers were harshly punished, often with execution.
Lin’s third objective was to confiscate foreign shops and force foreign merchants to sign pledges of good conduct, agreeing never to trade in opium and to be punished by Chinese law if ever found in violation.
It was this last objective that eventually brought war.
British warships were sent to Hong Kong, a trading center on the Chinese coast, where they protected opium-carrying merchant vessels.
Chinese ships sent by the emperor didn't stand a chance against the British warships and were destroyed by the dozen.
The British carried on this trade in spite of the fact that Opium use & sales had been declared illegal in China
The British government allowed this trade in spite of the fact that sale & use of Opium was illegal in England
As a result, by the 1830's, the British East India Company had become the World’s first international drug-trafficking organization
The East India Company shipped thousands of tons of opium through the Chinese port of Canton, which it traded for Chinese manufactured goods and for tea.
This trade produced, quite literally, a country filled with drug addicts, as opium parlors proliferated China in the early part of the 1800’s.
England could not balance its trade through exporting manufactured goods, mainly because the people and government of China did not have any interest in buying them.
As far as the British were concerned, the best solution was to increase the amount of goods they exported to China from their lands in India to pay for Chinese luxuries such as tea and silk.
Increasingly, in the 1700’s & 1800’s, the item exported to China was opium, produced in England’s Indian colonies
During 1840 and 1841, British naval forces destroyed Chinese military resistance and visited destruction on the cities of China’s Pacific coast & inland rivers.
Using steam-powered gunboats, the British Royal Navy could navigate upstream into each of China’s major rivers.
China’s obsolete artillery could not seriously threaten the British gunboats
This gave the British the ability to completely control China’s transportation of food & goods
Reason #2
Northern Chinese merchants began to sell Chinese cotton to compete with Indian cotton the British were selling.
Previously, Britain had used their
cotton sales to help ‘balance’ its tea
imports & consumption habits.
Reason #1
During the 1700’s, the British became a nation of tea drinkers and the demand for Chinese tea rose astronomically.
By about 1840, it is estimated that the average London worker spent five percent of his or her total household budget on tea.
The end result of the war was a humiliating defeat for China. In 1842, they signed a peace treaty that would have consequences that lasted to 1990’s!
Every nation tries to export (sell) MORE than it imports (buys). This is referred to as the nation’s “Trade Balance”
If a nation imports (buys) more than it exports (sells), it means that the nation is losing money. This weakens the economy because the nation then has less money to spend on other things.
By 1800 (or so) England was having some difficulty maintaining its trade balance with China because it was buying much more from the Chinese than it was able to sell to them.
The Chinese Emperor and leaders of the British forces meet to discuss the points of the treaty of Nanjing.
Western dominance of China began
with the Opium War of 1839-1842
This war proved once and for all that
industrial powers could completely
dominate any non-industrial nation—
even great nations such as China
The Opium War, between the English
& the Chinese, is often seen as the
ultimate example of Imperialism
Copy of the Treaty of Nanjing
By 1900, China was completely
dominated by the industrial
powers of Europe, the
USA & Japan.
How did this come to pass?
As in Africa and India, the industrial nations had superior technology and more advanced economies. This will help them take control of the less-industrialized China.
The Opium Wars
silk
tea
cotton
indigo dye
opium
British East India Co. gaining the right to rule India, 1757
Sepoy soldier
Arabian
Sea
Bay of
Bengal
1857 to 1947 is known as the "British Raj" in India.
cinnamon
coffee
tea
coconut
gemstones
rubber
Indian
Ocean